Come on now. Don’t give us, obsessive Twin Peaks fans, that look. We waited long enough for the series to return, so if we want to spend the 167 hours between ‘episodes’ decoding a potential secret code appearing in flickering airplane windows, then that’s what we’ll do.

Stop! Rewind.

Flickering airplane windows?

Check Part 7’s establishing shot of the FBI’s private jet flying past Mt. Shasta on its way to Yankton Federal Prison in Sioux City.

Notice the randomly white-outed windows?

No? Here’s a close-up of the Gulfstream G450 in slow motion, thanks to Li C.

You may think this is just the sun reflecting in the jet’s windows. Well, take a look at this negative version of the footage uploaded by Michael Godinez, which reveals the digital masks added in post to cover different windows frame after frame. UPDATE: As pointed out by ICYHOT, an area on the tail is masked as well.

UPDATE: Still not convinced? Here’s the original footage WITHOUT any light flickering, thanks to RunDNA.

Ethan Harper has been intrigued by this discovery since Sunday night. “There are exactly 135 frames in the sequence in question,” he tells Welcome to Twin Peaks. Below is Ethan’s transcript in groups of 7-high blocks, which includes the first 31 frames where all windows are visible. Underneath, you’ll find alternative transcriptions by Nick Sharratt and Justin Brown.

Plane window pattern by Ethan Harper

Plane window pattern by Nick Sharratt

Plane window pattern by Justin Brown

But now what? Do the numbers somehow add up to 430, the first mystery number of the new season?

Or maybe there’s always music in the air, and this is a flute fingering chart to play the tune Gordon Cole was whistling on a Native American 6-hole flute?

Welcome to Twin Peaks is calling all cryptanalysts to decipher the code in the comments. And should you think this is a little far-fetched, check out the FBI’s current dot code puzzle. A source of inspiration?

The answer to the FBI’s cryptanalysis quiz is “This time we used dot codes for each alphabet character. A little harder perhaps. Well done if you were able to solve it.”

Transcribe it to binary, then to guitar tab. Drop tuned it comes out similar to Engel by Rammstein, which Cole was whistling earlier in the episode. An Engel in mathematical terms can relate to a triangular matrix, presumably here that would be; White Lodge, Black Lodge, real life. So we have the FBI in real life, flying to meet doppelgänger Cooper from the Black Lodge, unaware of real Cooper having been through the Black Lodge, which is something you need to do on your way to the White Lodge. I think! That’s my theory. The mountain in the background is presumably another piece of symbolism to make you think triangle matrix. The plane is at the top of the mountain meaning the White & Black Lodges are equidistant but opposite below the surface of real life. I could be talking utter nonsense, & this could all be circumstantial evidence/coincidence but it sort of makes sense!

I’d go with Shasta – though Rainier definitely a contender? Both Stratovolcano…therefore ‘twin’ Peaks in some ways? Both have fascinating histories too – Rainier is where Kenneth Arnold spotted a number of unidentified skipping discs: media descriptions led to the term ‘flying saucer’ been coined. Shasta is heavily linked to the esoteric through both native mythology – for the Kalmath tribes it is the dwelling place of Skell, the spirit of the Above-World – and more recent additions that include the Rosicrucians, Lemuria and an under mountain UFO base. Say what? And what’s the message? If there’s a link to Fellini/Rammstein/Shasta/Rainier…is the answer contained in the film, the music/lyric or the myths of these peaks?

There’s a binary transcription on Reddit somewhere that looked like guitar tab to me. So I placed a spider capo across the first fret & used a clip on tuner to see if it could distinguish the notes. It could, so I drop tuned the guitar in order to clearly play them across the bottom strings only. I noticed a lot of people mentioning the Rammstein song so, not being a fan of their’s, I found the song on YouTube & the notes the tuner had come up with fitted just fine when strummed along.

If you’re thinking it’s flute or recorder – unlikely, as some of those wouldn’t make real notes and would sound awful, so I doubt it is a fingering chart for a tune? Could be wrong but that would involve Lynch doing some freaky experimental noise on the flute (wouldn’t put it past him). But especially on lines that are 2,3,4 or 3,4,5 – these aren’t valid finger positions for notes so? Source: I play the flute lol

First thing that came to mind was that these signals were being played out on windows. Windows is a computer company. So could it be a computer code such as binary? Second thing that came to mind was 7 keys of a keyboard, a melody perhaps?

I think from reading the above it’s been assumed it is a melody of some sort if not morse code for an actually phrase. Perhaps both? Doubt it though.

Someone mentioned about Cooper in the glass box. The sequence when it shrinks him inside and then expands again before going black does seem odd, could this too be a code gone unnoticed thus far? Kudos to the person above who brought this to our attention. I think it’s a good lead.

I treated the patterns as fingerings for a Native American flute, notated the resulting pitches, transposed it to C as my flute is in A, and played through it as written, in retrograde, inversion, and retrograde inversion. I didn’t come up with any familiar tunes, but it was certainly an amusing constraint for constructing a melody!

I too noticed it and just figured it was reflection, which I’m assuming is what we’re supposed to think. But It’s obviously been digitally altered.

Not to ruin the fun, but is it possible that the footage had been altered as a means to change it enough to differentiate it from the original jet ad? Copyright? Or alternatively, I’m pretty sure they would’ve gotten permission to use it, but perhaps this was a way to have the artist’s hand to the work, a bit of uniqueness. I’d guess it would be fairly unusual in Twin Peaks production lore to include borrowed footage? Maybe this simply a way to make it their own.
I almost wonder if it’s Lynch himself who did this, it’s fairly unsophisticated work that’s been carried out and he does have an ‘Additional Editing’ credit on the series. Just some thoughts.

Seeing that the tail ‘bit’ barely ever changes, I thought it’s probably not the low bit, but the high bit. Maybe the code is reversed (right to left). Still doesn’t give good ASCII though.
I thought about the second finger Gordon touches is the ‘spiritual’ finger, and how it’s been reversed in the fingerprints, but it’s hard to say how 10 fingers maps to 7 bits…

I tried using a morse code translator, first going by 6 bits, then by 3. This is the output I got with 3 bits at a time. I didn’t try using it with the tailwing bit yet, and not sure if it’d make a difference.
Website used: https://morsecode.scphillips.com/translator.html
You can even listen to the sounds…

I tried taking the output from the 3bit one, and taking the 2nd letter from each string of 10 (because of Gordon Coles spiritual finger clue), got SGOOOKOATU
Still feel like I’m getting close to something.

I don’t know what the community rule on one of Davids recurring topics, transcendental meditation, is. So if the following is in violation of any rule or agreement, feel free to edit/delete.
Personally I have no set opinion about that movement, but some of the things shown in “David wants to fly” didn’t sound great to me. On the other hand what I’ve read about the actual practices and teachings doesn’t sound like a typical sect or cult to me. I do acknoledge that the practice of meditation might be helpful to some people, so I don’t hold any negative prejudice against the practices per se.

Seeing David talk about TM again in that video of a screening in Italy gave me this idea that not only the window code might be connected to TM somehow. Searching a bit I found two things that struck me as interesting.

1. Apparently sound is a very important aspect of TM (but presumably in many other meditation techniques as well). Certain frequencies are believed to have a positive effect. Interestingly the range around 430 Hz is often quoted as highly effective (many times its 432 precisely, less often 430 is mentioned.)
2.The number 7 holds a major significance in TM because the theory is that there are seven levels of consciousness. (There is a wiki page about ‘transcendental meditation technique’ where all this is explained, but I didn’t want to hotlink it here.)

This just made me wonder if all those things in TP related to those numbers (Lucky 7, 7 symbols on the plane) and theories might be connected to Davids believe in TM somehow.

I know this is a delicate topic, cause if an artist uses his art to promote “religious” ideas this might be frowned upon. But because up until now it never felt like David wants to force it upon his audience, I feel like I’d be ok with him expressing what he believes to be right and good through his art.

HA! HA! Found it crazy that the mountain was the “back” of Mt. Shasta by calling it the “back” I am used to seeing it a different way. I lived in the town of Mt. Shasta for a bulk of my life, a small town alot like “Twin Peaks”, the mountain looks different from other angles. When I saw that airplane scene I wanted to blurt it out but I thought maybe it might be another Cascade range mountain, like Mount Hood. The airplane mystery is a interesting one, hope we aren’t reading too much into it.

I was hoping it might be related to these lines of data that are being presented to Agent Cooper by Mj Briggs, but so far couldn’t make any meaningful connection.
But maybe this helps others who are not as familiar with the whole Twin Peaks universe.

If those two mountains are Shasta and Rainier, they are two Peaks closely related to the first UFO watching and the land of lemurian aliens according to the last book of Mark Frost. The UFO watching was on 1947, two years after the Atomic Bomb test.

Diane is Windom Earle – Earle’s theme played twice in the episode with her in it and particularly when she is in the plane, look in her apartment its full of Japanese art and screens, she is teaming up with Mr C now too. I also think Gordon knows as I suspect when he says “remember when we used to smoke together in the old days” he knows Diane didn’t used to smoke with him but Earle did!

If the above transcription is right by M Biggs, then the 7 digit code can be converted to ASCII 7 bit and translated. According to (http://www.neurophys.wisc.edu/comp/docs/ascii/) “If you’ve read this far then you probably know that around then (1960’s), an 8-bit byte was becoming the standard way that computer hardware was built, and that you can store 128 different numbers in a 7-bit number. When you counted all possible alphanumeric characters (A to Z, lower and upper case, numeric digits 0 to 9, special characters like “% * / ?” etc.) you ended up a value of 90-something. It was therefore decided to use 7 bits to store the new ASCII code, with the eighth bit being used as a parity bit to detect transmission errors.” So the first character is always 0- which gives a good indicator that the 7 bits (with one hidden on the tail)- could be translated. This is what I got.
0000000 –null character
0000000
0000000
0000000
0000000
0000000
0000000
0000000
0000000
0000000
0000000
0000000
0000000
0011110- Rqst to send
0010100- device control 4
0000000- null
0111000- 8
0011100-file seperator
0011110->
0011110->
0011110->
0000000-null
0011110->
0011110->
0001110->
0011111-unit seperator
0001110-shift out
1011110-^
0011110-request to send
1011110-^
0011110-request to send
1001110-N
0001110-shift out
1001111-O
1001110-N
1001110-N
1001110-N
1001110-N
1001110-N
1001110-N
1001111-O
1001110-O
1001110-O
1000110-O
0001010-Line Feed
1001111-O
0000010-Start of Text
0001110-shift out
0000010-start of text
0000110-acknowledgement
0000110-acknowledgement
0000110
0000110
0000010-start of text
0000010
0000110-ack
0000110
0000010-start of text
0000010
0000010
0000110-acknowledgement
0000110-acknowledgement
0000110
0000010-start of text
0000011-end of text
0000010-start of text
0000010
0000010
0000010
0000010
0000010
0000010
1000010-B
1000011-C
1000010-B
1000010-B
1000010-B
1000010-B
0100010-”
0000010-start of text
0000010-start of text
0010010-”
0010010-”
0010010-”
0011010-substitute
0001000-backspace
0001010-line feed
0001010-line feed
0000010-start of text
0000010- start of text
0000110-ack
0000000-null
0000010-start of text
0000010
0000010
0000010
0000010
0000010
0000010
0000010
0000010
0000010
0000010
0000010
0000010
0000010
1000010-B
0000010
0000010
0000010
0000010
0000010
0000010
0000010
0000010
0000010
0000010

– Havent had time to mull it over- but there is some potential in here. Especially if something has been written in error from M Biggs above. There is an obvious “NNNNNOOOOOO” in there- which turned around could be “on” if the message is supposed to be read backwards. However- this is followed by “BCB”- which could be “Bad Cooper”, “Bring Cooper Back”, or “B(c)B” for Bobby Briggs- a key figure in this episode (Not sure what his middle initial might be”. Its almost 4 and I have to work in the morning- so someone please take this one on for a few days and Ill revisit this later.

Just to be clear about copyright works, the library shot of the plane would have to be bought. Using it and changing it would not save you the cost of buying it. If you adapt an existing work that’s in copyright, no matter how much you change it you still have to buy the rights.